Science Careers Blog

April 2008

April 29, 2008

Science Careers seeks personal stories and perspectives on science and scientific careers for publication in our "In Person" series. We're interested in submissions from scientists and trainees at every level, from undergraduates to senior scientists, to government officials and policy makers. We want perspectives from industry, academia, and government, and from the whole range of scientific disciplines.

Submissions should be written well and in a personal voice. They should be lean, readable, to the point, free of unnecessary jargon, and shorter than 1000 words. Please email submissions to jaustin@aaas.org.

April 28, 2008

From Inside Higher Ed we learn that National Science
Foundation has stopped reporting data on numbers of minorities earning
doctorates in some scientific specialties, if those numbers fall below a certain
threshold. The Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), an annual
survey of doctoral awardees conducted for NSF and five other federal agencies by
the National Opinion
Research Center, no longer reports data for table cells where the reporting of
small numbers in those cells may divulge personal or confidential
information.

According to the most recent (2006) report (PDF),
this non-reporting of data removes much of the data on Native American
participation in the sciences. Likewise, data for African-Americans in several
disciplines ...

Inside Higher Ed quotes an e-mail from Jaqui C.
Falkenheim, NSF's project manager who attributed the decision to a review by
NSF's Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) that publishes this and
other workforce statistical reports. She said, "The findings of that review
revealed the need, given more restrictive rules/guidelines and heightened
concerns about confidentiality/privacy, to tighten SRS procedures for releasing
SED data to the public." Falkenheim adds that protection of confidentiality
helps keep response rates high and protects "the reputation of NSF as a research
partner with academe".

How large does the cell size need to be to allow
release of data? According to Falkenheim and Inside Higher Ed, that's
confidential as well.

Users of these data are both disappointed and
mystified. "This hides information. It removes information," said Andreen
Neukranz-Butler, human rights compliance officer for the University of Idaho.
She also noted that even with small cell sizes, no names or institutions are
revealed, thus the concerns about confidentiality don't add up.

One of the commenters on the InsideHigherEd site, a
researcher at University of California-Berkeley remarked, "This latest move is
utterly pointless, indeed counter productive. It seems yet another move intended
to obscure the very slow growth of Ph.D. acquisition by ethnic
minorities."

Science Careers asked Falkenheim to comment further;
we will update this post with NSF's response.

April 24, 2008

Being picked by your colleagues to become their boss is one of the toughest challenges you'll face in your career, writes Marie Peronnau in the French finance online magazine Capital.fr. "This indeed requires asserting your authority, changing your image, and adding some distance to emotional relationships that have now become burdensome," Peronnau continues. This is especially true for industry careers, but similar situations may occur in the academic world. I´m taking the liberty of translating and summarizing Peronnau's key points:

"Assert your legitimity as quickly as possible." Inform your colleagues of your new position before they hear it in a formal announcement. Make new rules of the game, new targets, and other changes clear to your colleagues in department and one-to-one meetings.

"Spot the jealous ones to prevent them from doing any harm." Manage disapointment, jealousy, and any other negative feelings openly before they damage the working atmosphere and productivity. Be diplomatic, and show your confidence in the competences of the people who resent your promotion. If hostility remains, ask for advice to your superiors, but only when you've tried everything else, as this may undermine your image as a leader.

"Don't feel shy about asserting your authority." Don't hesitate to give directives even if it means breaking your former relationship with the group. Don't rely on past friendships with colleagues as this may make it difficult for them to recognize your authority and may be viewed by others as favoritism.

"Distance yourself from your team, but just enough." You must assert your authority, but this doesn't mean becoming authoritarian. Strive to find the right balance.

"Accept the loneliness your position implies." Get used to the idea that you can't share your complains or doubts with your former colleagues, as this would now harm your credibility. Instead, find a coach or mentor within your department.

The article contains many more good pieces of advice. If you want to read the complete version in French, here it is.

April 22, 2008

A new, $1 million science prize is available, on an unlikely topic and from an unlikely source. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an organization not known for promoting science, has announced a $1 million jackpot for the "first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable
quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012."

A New York Times article by John Schwartz quotes PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk as saying that the proposal for the prize caused a "'near civil war'" at PETA because (quoting the article now and not Newkirk), "so many PETA members are repulsed by the thought of eating animal tissue, even if no animals are killed."

"Lisa Lange, a vice president of the organization, said she was part of
the heated exchange. “My main concern is, as the largest animal rights
organization in the world, it’s our job to introduce the philosophy and
hammer it home that animals are not ours to eat.” Ms. Lange added, “I
remember saying I would be much more comfortable promoting eating
roadkill.”

April 22, 2008

Thanks to Dr. Webb for voicing the predicament I and my colleagues face as recently graduated bioscience Ph.Ds. Unfortunately, I have real-life proof that spending 6 years in graduate school does not make financial sense. Like Laurie Earls, I too met my husband in graduate school, and like her and her husband, we are struggling to gain financial security. Living in the Washington, DC, area, we face high rent and childcare costs while simultaneously repaying undergraduate student loans. Both my husband and I have chosen to pursue non-traditional science careers, in large part because we simply cannot meet our financial obligations on postdoc salaries. As new parents, we are unwilling to postpone further our ability to save money for a house and our child's education, and so we have both left the bench.

I encourage policymakers to consider carefully the career prospects of PhD scientists. In light of concerns that U.S. competitiveness is lagging in science and technology, perhaps efforts should be focused on employing, compensating and, hence, retaining the Ph.D.s we have. If efforts are instead focused on recruiting even more doctoral candidates – and this is certainly the current trend – I fear that the United States will simply have an even greater number of Ph.D.s who literally cannot afford to be scientists.

April 22, 2008

There have been a few interesting European reports that I've been meaning to write about, so here they are, all in one convenient package!

First up:Europe's scientific workforce is aging.

Europe's
population as a whole is aging, so it's not a big surprise that the
scientific workforce is aging, too. Eurostat recently took a look at
the demographics of human resources in science and technology (HRST),
which they define as people with higher education or employment in science and technology. Rather than refer to people as an acronym, though, I shall call them "folks in science."

Eurostat estimates that 40% of the folks in science
in Europe are between ages 45 and 64, and the percentage of workers in
that age group has been increasing by 3.3% per year since 2001.
Bulgaria has the oldest scientific workforce (with 46%
of folks in science over age 45), followed by Finland, Germany, and
Sweden. Spain has the youngest scientific workforce (with 30% between
ages 45 and 64), followed by Ireland and Portugal.

The report also looks at the gender breakdown (47% of folks in science aged 45 to 64 are
women, it says here -- that's overall, and the report breaks it down by country but nothing else), job-to-job mobility (2.9% of folks in science aged 45
to 64 changed jobs in a one-year period compared with 6.2% of those in
the whole group surveyed -- those aged 25 to 64), and unemployment
(2.9% of the total folks in science are unemployed, compared with 2.2%
of the older group, with, of course, huge variations by country).

The report's authors don't include too much strong
language in the way of recommendations: "The impact of this labour
force aging needs to be closely monitored, in particular regarding the
highly qualified section of the labour force, to ensure knowledge
transfer," the report's authors write. I suspect we'll see numbers from
this analysis pop up in a future report aimed at drawing young people
into science in Europe.

A mere 15% of full professors in European universities are women. That statistic in itself isn't new, but it's one of many in a new report that wasput together by an independent panelcharged by the European Commission "to review
the procedures for evaluating and promoting research personnel and to
identify measures taken to promote women into senior positions,"
according to a press release.

To
accomplish this, the report's authors reviewed the issues in depth,
including the latest statistics on women in the scientific workforce,
the latest legislation in each country that pertains to gender equality
in the workforce, and reviews of programs that seem to be successful in
promoting women in the workforce. The report -- called "Mapping the maze: getting more women to the top in research" -- makes several recommendations: There should be national and international committmentsto
equality in the workforce, training efforts should inform high-level
officials and administrators on gender aspects of the workforce, create
more transparent hiring processes by requiring all job positions to be
publicly advertised, collect better data on hiring and workforce, and
recommend that institutions make public information on their faculty's
age, gender, and income distribution.

And finally:The European Commission wants to help you get the right funding for your project.

The
Commission has developed its "Practical guide to EU funding
opportunities for research, development and innovation," which
describes three funding mechanisms: the 7th Framework Program (FP7), the Competitiveness and Innovation Program (CIP), and structural funds.
According to the new guide, FP7 "provides funding to co-finance
research, technological development and demonstration projects based on
competitive calls and independent peer review of project proposals."
CIP is meant to "promote innovation (including eco-innovation), foster
business support services in the regions ... , encourage a better
take-up and use of information and communications technologies,
help to develop the information society and promote the increased use
of renewable energies and energy efficiency." And structural funds are
meant "to strengthen economic, social and territorial cohesion by
reducing
disparities in the level of development among regions and Member States."

April 21, 2008

The New York Times asked financial aid
directors from five American universities to answer reader questions about
funding their higher educations, in an online discussion forum. The five
schools include elite institutions (Harvard, Yale), other private schools (St.
Johns University in New York City), large public universities (University of
California at Los Angeles), and commuter colleges (Buffalo State in New York).

The questions include both general
questions ("How will all the new changes affect aid for graduate students?") and questions about very personal,
specific circumstances ...

I was a single parent raising my daughter
for 10 years. She’ll enter college in 2009. I remarried in 2007. My husband (not
her father) earns approximately $65,000; I earn $40,000. Will his income also be
counted when considering the aid we receive? Her real father is $35,000 in
arrears in child support, and has not had significant income in many years.

The Times will continue the online
discussion until Wednesday, 23 April, if you want to ask your questions or you
just want to see if your circumstances are beiing addressed.

April 16, 2008

"After a short-lived recovery in 2006–07, faculty salaries are lagging behind inflation again this year. Yet the salaries paid to head football coaches, presidents, and other top administrators do not seem to reflect an economic downturn."

April 14, 2008

One year after the Virginia Tech shootings,
and weeks after another multiple-fatal shooting incident at Northern Illinois
University, campus administrators and faculty have become much less reluctant to
refer to counselors those students they feel are dangers to themselves or
others. According to an Associated Press story, via MSNBC, student privacy considerations are now
being balanced with concerns for physical safety. Yet questions remain whether
university counseling services can handle the crush.

"Administrators are pushing students
harder to get help, looking more aggressively for signs of trouble and urging
faculty to speakup when they have concerns," writes the AP. It isn't just
administrators; faculty are watching student writing assignments for signs of
trouble. Universities are recruiting resident advisors and other students to
report incidents that indicate violent tendencies.

Until recently, the article says,
administrators and faculty felt constrained from reporting these incidents due
to a concern for student privacy. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
is often cited as a reason to protect a student's privacy, but that law focuses
on student records and allows exceptions "in cases of health and safety emergencies." A
new law in Virginia, signed last week, allows institutions to alert parents if
students appear dangerous. Some campuses, notably Cornell University, already
have estalished policies to notify parents if their children are deemed a threat
to themselves or others.

The Association for University and College
Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD), the professional society of college
counselors, however, recommends involving parents with the student's consent. In
a statement released last fall the
AUCCD says ...

[S]uggestions that counseling staff routinely involve
parents in the treatment process against a student’s will are ill-considered.
This abrogation of the student’s rights should only be used when state law
allows, when it is a treatment team decision, and when it is a last resort in
cases where other options for safety have been explored and
discarded.

For increased vigilance to be effective,
universities need the capacity in their counseling services to handle the
increased load. As we reported last month in a related story, Canadian campuses are also
experiencing a sharp upward demand for mental health services, in some cases,
outstripping the capabilities to provide those services quickly. A similar
condition is occurring at American universities.

Last April, after the Virginia Tech
shootings, Russ Federman, director of University of Virginia's counseling
service, testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland
Security and Government Affairs. He noted that from a national survey of
university counseling directors, "we see that in 1996 we had a ratio of one FTE
clinical staff per 1598 students. This past year, in 2006 we see a ratio of one
per 1697. We are not getting ahead of the curve; if anything, we are sliding
behind."

April 10, 2008

Summer internships offer excellent
opportunities for students to get hands-on experience and (sometimes) a little
money in a real working environment. But Highland Capital Partners is offering
something more: a summer internship that can kick-start your new business.

Highland Capital Partners (HCP) is a venture
capital company based in Massachusetts and California that invests in
early-stage businesses in the communications, digital media, information
technology, health care, and consumer-products industries. This summer, HCP is
offering its second "Summer@Highland" program, which offers student
entrepreneurs a chance to learn the ropes of building an enterprise using their
own business ideas.

HCP offers the internship to students --
graduate or undergraduate -- or recent graduates, either individually or in
teams of up to 4 people, for 10 weeks. The teams work out of HCP offices in
Lexington, Massachusetts or Menlo Park, California. Teams of 2 or more divide a
stipend of $15,000; individual interns (i.e. teams of 1 person) receive $7,500.
In addition, HCP offers a staff member who can put interns in touch with HCP's
network of investors and client companies.

Applicants need to show HCP a good
business idea with at least some movement towards the marketplace. HCP defines
a "good" idea as one with the potential to be highly disruptive in its field.
The teams must have taken at least the first steps in forming a business, beyond
the idea stage. HCP expects interns to have a solid grounding in their
marketplace or technology. Interns must also provide testimonials from advisers
who share the interns' vision and can attest to the idea's potential.

If, as a result of the internship, interns
get their enterprises going and attract other investors, HCP asks the former
interns to allow HCP the option of co-investing up to 50% in the same round of
financing as the other investors.

If you have an idea with the potential to
become the next Google or Facebook, don't delay. Applications close on 22
April.

In their 2008 Experiential Education Survey, NACE asked 311 employers in the United States -- 45.8% of them representing manufacturing organizations, 48.7% services employers, and 5.5% government/nonprofit sector -- about their internship programs and hiring practices. The results show that about 36 percent of the Class of 2007 graduates hired by companies had taken part in an internship program within the same company, compared with 30 percent for the Class of 2005.

"Currently, employers say they extended job offers to nearly 70 percent of their interns; in 2001, they offered jobs to 57 percent," NACE executive director Marilyn Mackes said in a press release. "Employers consistently name the internship program as one of the most effective tools they have for hiring new college graduates."

As judged by the retention rates after hiring, both employers and employees are satisfied with the formula. In the study, more than one-third of employers said the former interns are more likely to stay for at least 1 year after hiring, and nearly half said they were likely to be there after 5 years.

It seems the trend will continue to grow. The employers who took part in the NACE survey anticipated a 4% increase in the number of graduates they would bring into their internship programs.

April 4, 2008

You may have seen this already in the mainstream media, but this morning's announcement by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the economy lost 80,000 non-farm jobs in March isn't good news for folks seeking scientific or any other type of employment. The jobs report continues trends seen throughout the first quarter of 2008, during which average monthly job losses were 77,000. The unemployment rate was up almost half a percent compared to the average rate during the first half of 2007.

The broad category most directly linked to science--professional and technical services--was flat for March, as it has been since the beginning of the year.

Of some interest to scientists is the "employment services" category, which includes temporary workers. (For more information on working as a scientific "temp", see Cliff Mintz's article "Short-Term Science".) Though it's often said that temps do well when the economy is poor, "employment services" was among the worst-performing categories in March, shedding 42,000 jobs. That's nearly as bad as the construction industry, which, under the influence of the current mortgage crisis, shed 51,000 jobs in March.

April 4, 2008

A
few European countries are setting aside money to fund top-notch
European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant proposals that didn't
quite make the cut for the ERC's competition. You can read about it in this week's Science
(subscription required). Briefly, 430 proposals of the more than 9,000
submitted were deemed worthy of funding, but the ERC estimates that the
€290 million budget will only fund about 300 of those. France, Italy,
Switzerland, and Spain all have announced that they will step up and
provide some form of funding for those top-tier proposals that don't
get funded.

France's Agence Nationale de la Recherche has announced it will put up €10 million to fund the unfunded ERC proposals submitted by scientists at French host institutions. Italy has set aside €30 million
for any unfunded Starting Grant finalist, on the condition that they perform
their research in Italy. Switzerland's National Science Foundation has announced
that it will review the ERC finalist proposals from Swiss host
institutions and provide some sort of funding for those that meet
certain additional criteria. And Spain will provide €100,000 to the Starting Grant finalists at Spanish host institutions to help them set up labs or get their projects started while they apply for funding elsewhere.

We
here at Careers are pretty impressed with this idea: The European
Commission already put in the time end effort to peer review the
grants, so the national governments can't really go wrong funding
proposals already deemed excellent. In this era of tight federal
budgets, could this model work for, say, top-notch-but-turned-down NIH
proposals? Could a state government or private foundation pick up NSF
proposals that would have been funded if the payline had been more
favorable? It's an interesting way to get additional mileage out of the
grant/peer review system.

April 3, 2008

For basketball fans in the U.S., the Final Four -- the semifinals and finals of the
collegiate basketball championship, which start on Saturday -- is one of the
year's top attractions. Among this year's contenders is the University of
Kansas, a perennial basketball power. Its center, Sasha Kaun, is an imposing figure in
the computer lab as well as the basketball court.

At the start of
the season, Kaun, at 6'11" and 250 lbs (2.108 meters and 113.398 kilograms), was
the Jayhawks ' starting center, but now he comes off the bench where he, as MSNBC notes, "contributes points, rebounds and
blocked shots, but also does a lot of little things that don’t show up in the
box score."

In a sport where fewer star players are getting their
bachelors degrees and the term student-athlete is a running joke, Kaun is a
senior studying computer science, not your typical jock major. He excels in the
classroom; Kaun was one of two Kansas players named to this year's Big-12 all-academic team.

The
story of how Kaun got to Kansas to play for one of college basketball's top
teams is quite a tale in itself. Kaun's family lived
in the Siberian town of Tomsk, where his father worked as a computer programmer
in a bank. Some 10 years ago, the 13 year-old Sasha Kaun came home to learn that
his father was found dead in a parking garage under mysterious circumstances
(Russian authorities call the death a suicide, which the family disputes). Kaun
still carries his late father's picture in his wallet and credits his father
with the inspiration to study computer science.

Three years
later, Kaun heard from a friend who just graduated from the Florida Air Academy,
a private boarding school in Melbourne, Florida. The school was recruiting
students from Russia; Kaun jumped at the opportunity to come to the United
States. The school's basketball coach recruited Kaun, who at 6'10" was the
school's tallest student. Up to then, however, Kaun had never played more than
informal pick-up games, and did not know a word of English.

Kaun had to
learn not just English but also the basics of basketball, and then the finer
points, where size by itself means little. His hard work and long hours in the
classroom, weight room, and on the court, transformed him into a leading college
prospect, recruited by Duke and Michigan State as well as Kansas. This season,
he had to work through injuries suffered in his junior year that lowered his
point production, but Kaun still leads the team this year in field goal percentage.

While Kaun's
immediate goal may be the national championship, his career can take any number
of routes, and computer science is high among the options.

April 3, 2008

That's the title of a BBC Radio 4 piece that aired on Monday. Mark Miodownik,
a research scientist and lecturer at King's College London, questions
the periodic goverment and private institution reports stating that the
U.K. needs to increase its scientific workforce. How can this be true,
Miodownik wonders, when so many early-career scientists can't find
jobs? Miodownik hits the streets, so to speak, to gather opinions on
the subject from students, scientists, and leaders, including the U.K.
science minister Ian Pearson and Royal Society president Martin Rees.

On that same theme, Dan Greenberg writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "The Odds Aren't Favorable for Careers in Science."
A preview: "Unsolicited advice for students contemplating a career in
scientific research: Don't -- unless you’re passionate about life in
the lab and willing to undergo
a long apprenticeship, at low wages, with an uncertain outcome, gain a
situation where, against long odds, you can compete for position and
money to do the research that interests you. Understand this: The
chances of making it are not good."

About this Blog

Get frequent updates from the science-career trenches including advice, opinion, news, funding opportunities, and links to other career-related resources. Our bloggers include Science Careers editors and staff, and select outsiders, including:

Jim Austin, Editor of Science Careers, @SciCareerEditor on Twitter

Elisabeth Pain, Barcelona-based Contributing Editor

Donisha Adams, Science Careers Publications Assistant

Our guest bloggers include:

Dan Albert MD, MS, Founding Director, UW McPherson Eye Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin.